News and views of (other) Russia(n)(s)
Just as Russia's fascist police arrest Igor Zaitsev, a Petersburg university lecturer, on criminal felony charges of "financing extremism" (that is, donating tiny amounts of money to the murdered Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation), the Finnish authorities are preparing to deport Valentin Sergienko, a Petersburger whose now-rejected asylum claim in Finland was based on his proven record…
Yesterday, 10 August 2026, the Russian Supreme Court disqualified the opposition Yabloko party from September's parliamentary elections, presumably for their (mild) antiwar stance. More remarkably, given the times, several hundred mostly young Muscovites showed up to support Yabloko. Deutsche Welle rounded up the reaction of talking heads to yesterday's events, while the ceaselessly amazing…
The Russian far-right (and their backers in the Kremlin) have a problem with Russians who want to talk in public about Stalin's Great Terror, including at the NKVD's killing fields in the Sandarmokh forest in Karelia, where every year on August fifth the names of the victims are read aloud.
The former Russian settlement of Fort Ross in Northern California was for many years a fertile beachhead for Putinist soft power and pro-Putinist Russian American meddlers. Their campaign suffered a serious setback when Russia brutally invaded Ukraine, but now that a fascist regime has been installed in the White House, Russian officials have returned to Fort Ross and even inveigled local…
In 2023, Oleg Belousov was the first person in Petersburg to be convicted of "disseminating fake news about the Russian army." Today, his son Daniil was sentenced to 7 years in prison for "condoning terrorism." Both Oleg and Daniil are disabled people, a fact that made no difference to their criminal judges.
The cinematography department of the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) posted an ad on its VKontakte page about "a special group" being recruited for director and cinematographer Mikhail Agranovich's class. Prospective students are offered free tuition starting in the 2027 academic year, provided they sign a one-year contract with the Russian Defense Ministry for service in UAV…
Roskom who? / We'll do the job ourselves / A little Stalin sits inside each of us / He sits there inside / And says to you: / 'Delete that tweet' / 'Don’t do that—take back that like / Or the investigator will be at your door' / That’s how sweet it’s become to stay mum / A little Stalin lives inside each of us
Laura Loomer (left) is an American far-right conspiracist and influencer from Arizona who has suddenly (supposedly) seen the light on Ukraine after actually visiting the country that has endured an unprovoked Russian invasion for the last four and a half years Lily Lynch (right) is a leftyish American foreign affairs writer from California who, apparently, does not need to see a place with her own…
1) Tokayev reads Putin the riot act. 2) "[E]very other person is ready to kill him."
Russian business daily Delovoi Peterburg's dry-as-dust and officialese-laden account of the Ukrainian drone attacks on Wildberries warehouses in the Petersburg area segues into a photo essay about a walk through one of the targeted neighborhoods eleven years ago and the Gray Lady's oddly much more compassionate account of the effects of the attacks on Russia's rank-and-file e-retailers. Look where…
